By DOUG OLESON | Midweek News
“Every day I get up, I pray that it lasts,” the Kirkland housewife said.
On March 16, Thurlby’s longtime friend and neighbor Ron Roach gave her something no one else could: a new kidney.
Roach said he didn’t realize how great the need for kidneys is until he began to research it in preparation for his donation.
“I had never thought about doing this before,” he said. “When you know someone who needs it, you do it.”
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing website, there are currently 110,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant in the United States, including 5,000 in Illinois alone. Every 10 minutes a new person is added to the list. At some point in their lives, one in 20 Americans will need some sort of medical tissue transplant, and an average of 18 people die every day because they didn’t get one.
For Thurlby, a Type 1 diabetic since she was 9, the journey began two years ago, when she needed a heart valve replaced. As a result of the surgery, her kidneys failed.
Every night for 11 hours, Thurlby was hooked up to a dialysis machine the size of a computer printer, which she was able to drag around her house.
The process, she said, would have gone on for the rest of her life if Roach hadn’t decided to step up.
Roach and his wife play cards with Thurlby’s mother several times a week. One night, during a game of pinochle, Thurlby’s mother was giving the couple an update on her daughter’s condition and mentioned Thurlby’s blood type is O-negative, Roach said.
Since his own blood is O-positive, it got him to thinking about donating one of his kidneys.
“To some people, it’s a big step, but not to me,” he said. “I can’t imagine being on that thing 11 hours a day.”
Although they weren’t exactly best friends, Roach, 57, and Thurlby, 50, said they knew each other from growing up in the same small town. When talking to him, she even calls him by an old boyhood nickname, “Hoody,” which he says he got because as a teenager he was always under the hood of a car.
At first, when her mother informed her of Roach’s offer, Thurlby couldn’t believe it. She even tried to talk him out of it.
“You never know where you’re going to find (a kidney) and lo and behold, he’s only four blocks away,” she said. “I told him to think about it.”
Once they agreed to try it, the two got their blood tested in the transplant center at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison, one of only a few transplant centers in the area.
According to Dave Bosch, communications director for Gift of Hope Organ and Donor Network, there is a long, involved process with any organ transplant, particularly kidneys. A number of factors have to be considered, including blood type, age, tissue typing and general body size – an adult, for instance, can’t donate an organ to a baby.
“It is a very complex thing,” Bosch said.
Kidneys are even more complicated than other organs, he said, since more factors must match. The more matches, the less chance there is for the body to reject the new organ. There are, he added, various anti-rejection medications that can be taken post-surgery to help the process along.
Thurlby said her 80-year-old mother and one of her cousins had offered to donate, but Roach turned out to be a better match. She wouldn’t consider taking an organ from her husband, whose mother was on dialysis for years, or from her sons.
Roach agreed.
“I told my kids to keep their kidneys good,” he said, adding that he would never ask them to donate one to him.
Besides blood tests, which were taken right up until the day of surgery, Roach also had to meet with doctors and even a psychiatrist. He jokes that the doctors wanted to be sure Thurlby’s sons – who stand 6-feet-6 inches and 6-feet-8 inches tall – weren’t forcing him to donate.
Roach also had to undergo a day-long battery of tests to determine if he was physically able to donate. By the time he was done, Thurlby declared him “the healthiest man in Kirkland.” Though he will turn 58 soon, Roach said the doctors told him he had the kidneys of an 18-year-old.
“I guess they were working good,” he said.
Roach’s surgery took about five hours, longer than planned because of a minor complication. Thurlby said she went under about 10 a.m. and woke up nine hours later.
Thurlby said the surgeon decided to leave her old kidneys in, since they were still functioning a little. Both said the procedure went well and neither said they felt much pain. Thurlby said giving birth to her sons was more difficult. Except for feeling tired and wanting a nap, she said she was surprised at how smoothly everything went.
Roach said he felt only discomfort at first, but has been experiencing a little pain the last couple of weeks, which he attributed to his body returning to normal.
“That first day, you don’t eat much,” he said.
Before the surgery, Thurlby wasn’t allowed to consume milk, ice cream, salt or phosphorous foods. Now, she can have anything but mushrooms, with a special emphasis on protein and potassium. Both donor and recipient are supposed to drink at least 64 ounces of water a day.
The big question is how long will the kidneys hold up. According to Bosch, that is an impossible question to answer.
“There is no black and white formula to follow,” he said. “The goal is for the kidney to start producing urine right away. But I can’t say it should take effect in four hours and then have someone see that and wonder why theirs didn’t work in that same time frame.”
Because there are “a million factors involved,” Bosch said a person’s recovery mainly depends on their overall health. Since everyone is different, there’s just no way of accurately predicting how long or how well a transplant worked.
“We just hope it goes on as long as possible,” Roach said.
So how do you thank someone who has just given you a chance for a normal life?
“I ask myself that same question every day,” Thurlby said. “You don’t just give him a gift card.”
0 COMMENTS:
Post a Comment